The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Tighten up!" Blays called. "Back to back! Push toward the water's edge!"

  Dante shuffled closer to him. A woman stabbed at him with a length of bone. He cut through its shaft, then through her arm. She dropped back two steps, then leaned forward and charged him with both arms extended for his face, one no more than a bleeding stump. He cut her down.

  Behind him, Naran and Volo had had no choice but to toss their bows over their left shoulders and draw their weapons. Naran had his saber back—after the Righteous Monsoon had taken the Bastion, they'd found it in the palace's collection of artifacts taken from foreign intruders and criminals—and Volo bore a stout, curved blade with a heavy guard over the knuckles and a metal spike sticking from the pommel. It looked like, and was, a cruel, close-quarters weapon.

  Which was very good news, because the enemy was throwing themselves at the four of them with inhuman recklessness. Within moments, the only thing keeping them from being completely overwhelmed was the corpses floating in the water and impeding the advance of those still living. As Dante chopped down a one-eyed man, a woman stabbed past his guard with a bone spear, goring him in the ribs.

  Dante stumbled into Blays' back. As the woman moved to finish the job, Naran thrust forward, his saber spearing through her throat. Dante reached for the nether, meaning to heal himself, but it remained as locked up as the realm's crown jewels.

  Next to him, Volo stabbed a sunken-eyed man through the chest. He took the blade willingly, sliding closer to her and stabbing down at her neck with a broken thigh bone. She turned her head, grunting as the weapon scraped down her collarbone and shoulder. Dante leaned in and cut off the man's sword arm at the elbow. Volo withdrew her weapon and bashed the man in the ear in with the heavy guard of her weapon.

  Blays was the only one of them holding his own against the crush of bodies. For all of the ones they'd already killed, even more pressed in on them.

  "No good," Dante said.

  "No good about to die," Blays agreed, shearing through a woman's jaw. He gestured his mundane sword behind him toward the eastern face of the canyon-like space. "Cut a lane toward the wall! Volo, behind us with a flaming star!"

  Dante and Naran cleaved their way eastward while Blays held off a throng of attackers at the point of their retreat. Volo paired with Naran, whose saber couldn't quite keep up with the frenzied men and women coming at them. Dante's side felt hot, the wound tearing at him with every thrust and hack. As they cut down the last of the enemy between them and the wall, Volo sheathed her blade with a clack, unshouldered her bow, and nocked one of the bag-tipped arrows.

  "Ready!" A note of shrillness pierced her voice.

  "Chevron," Blays said. He held the middle, Dante and Naran at his flanks. "Push!"

  Dante surged forward, swinging his nethereal blade like a machete through the jungles of the Plagued Islands. Blays bellowed in echoing defiance, cleaving a grisly path forward. To that point, their foe had fought with a feral madness, all but oblivious to the wounds they suffered for it, but for the first time, they hesitated. Some even dropped back a step.

  "Fall back!" Blays disengaged, splashing across the space they'd opened between themselves and Volo. The girl sighted down the shaft of her arrow, arm quivering. Blays flung himself forward. "Loose!"

  Volo released her hold. Dante jumped headfirst toward the wall. As he splashed down, reddish light speared through the blood-colored water. A great fist slammed upon him, the impact judding up his spine. The thunder of the explosion followed an instant later. Half dazed, he found his feet, reeling to the side.

  Limbs and torsos rocked on the unsettled surface. Pink foam sizzled and popped. Most of the enemy that hadn't been destroyed in the blast had been knocked from their feet. Blays was already wading into them, severing anything he could reach. Dante followed suit.

  A man stood from the water, half his face hanging in shreds, teeth and jaw and throat exposed. Unarmed, he threw himself at Dante. Dante flicked out his sword and cut him down the middle. The man didn't stop reaching for Dante's face until his entire body went slack.

  Dante threw the corpse aside, chest heaving. They'd nearly cleared out the right flank of the opposition, but the people to their left were regrouping, gathering to mount another attack.

  "Get down!" Naran's clear voice carried over the thresh of legs through water. He had his bow out, body tensed to the draw of the string.

  Dante dropped back into the water. An arm bobbed against his head, fingers brushing his cheek. He closed his eyes, but he could still see the flash of light through his eyelids, feel the bang of sound in his chest.

  He stood. The pool was slopping around like a storm-tossed sea. The air stank of sulfur and an acrid, insidious tang that made him want to turn away. Or maybe his nausea was the product of the slew of scorched torsos, floating limbs, and exposed organs. A handful of survivors were regaining their feet and moving together. They still didn't look scared. Just hateful and pained.

  Blays moved across from them, angling both swords down from his sides. "Now would be a good time to surrender."

  The people arrayed themselves in a line. There were only nine left, and of those who were still on their feet, most were bleeding, burned, or both. Despite this, they lurched forward. Blays' face tightened and twitched at the eyes and mouth. It was a fleeting expression, and so subtle that only Dante and possibly Minn would have caught the anguish in it.

  He lifted his swords and cut down two men with three swings. Dante ran to join him, but by the time he got there, only a single man was still on his feet. With mild disgust, he put the man to rest.

  Their breathing echoed through the cavern. Water dripped from the ceiling. Other than the ripples of the bobbing bodies, the pool was still.

  Blays turned, teeth parted. "Is everyone all right?"

  "Stabbed." Dante hovered his hand over his ribs. "I've had worse."

  Volo was bleeding down her collar, but it didn't look serious. Naran had deep fingernail gouges across his forearm and a gash to the thigh. Painful, but not crippling.

  "What were those things?" Volo's voice sounded half an octave higher. "They looked like people, but they didn't act like people. So were they people?"

  "I've fought a lot of people," Blays said. "And I've never seen them come at you to the last man. They should have been shitting their rags after the first flaming star."

  Naran nodded. "There is also the matter that they were lurking beneath the water. Not breathing is not a very peoplish thing to do."

  "Either that, or you need to hire some of them as sailors."

  "Watch the water," Dante said. "And everything else, too. We have to get moving. If the Monsoon breaks through the Drakebane's lines, Gladdic might decide to run away."

  "He tends to do that, doesn't he?" Blays slogged along beside him. "Ought to write his superiors a letter of condemnation. We can send it inside the box we deliver his head in."

  The stone sloped up beneath Dante's feet. He left the pool, dripping red everywhere. With a start, he realized he still had his sword out, but he didn't feel enervated in the slightest. If anything, he felt energized, and so did the sword: the nether flowing along its blade was rushing like floodwaters. Yet the nether around him was still frozen in place.

  The shelf of rock bent to the right. Ahead, thin white lengths of matter rose in a blade-like forest, obscuring the view of what lay ahead. The roar and batter of combat sounded to the south. The pressure in Dante's head had grown so strong it felt like a spike was ready to press through the middle of his brow.

  "We're close." He glanced at Naran and Volo. "If you have a shot at Gladdic, take it."

  They made noises of agreement. Naran's gaze was distant but steady, as if his time in captivity had taught him that slaughtering a hundred hostile insane people was just one of those things you did in life. Volo's face looked haunted. On the brink of a breakdown. A stark contrast to the aftermath of the massacre they'd seen on their way to Dara Bode, when her respon
se had been red-hot anger. Then again, that time, she hadn't had to kill anyone herself.

  They entered the forest of pale blades. These were smooth, with the occasional knob or curve. It made the formations look organic, like trunks or bones.

  Blays let his fingers trail along a flat, rib-like projection. "Know what this reminds me of?"

  Dante nodded. "Barden."

  "Is that because it is like Barden?"

  "It has to be. This place is wronger than Lyle's prophecies." A sharp tingle poked into Dante's palm. He jerked back his hand, nearly dropping his sword. Blays twitched, too. Dante looked up. "You felt that?"

  "You mean the invisible bees attempting to make a home in the center of my hand?"

  "Any idea what it was?"

  "Let me ask." He held the hilt up to his ear, glancing up and to the right. "Hello, sword? My friend thinks I am a soothsayer. Any suggestions as to how I should best insult his intelligence?"

  Dante turned the sword in his hand, eyeing the handle. There were no obvious signs of trouble, but it was still emitting a tingle that verged on unpleasant.

  Something drove into his side. The thing was Blays, tackling him to the hard ground. As the air left Dante's lungs in a rude whoosh, he heard the twang of bows. Arrows swept overhead and rapped into the white trunks behind them. Chunks of chalky matter spat down on their heads.

  "Archers," Blays said.

  "You don't say?!" Dante wheezed, catching his breath. "Were they the kind with bows and arrows?"

  Beside him, Volo leaned around a bony trunk and let loose an arrow. She swung back behind cover. "I count about eight."

  "Then I hope the last battle gave you double vision." Dante reached for the nether, but it was still trapped fast, as if caught beneath a rock. "Drakebane's men?"

  "Either that or the Odo Sein they're with enslaved them from somewhere."

  "Odo Sein?"

  He peeked his head up from cover. The trunks of matter were rarely taller than a man's gut, and while they sometimes grew in small clusters, there was usually several feet of space between them. This meant both cover and visibility were decent. The archers were hunkered down in a line about eighty feet away. One snapped off a shot at him; he ducked, then reappeared on the other side of the trunk he was using for cover. A pair of Odo Sein advanced from hiding, ducking to the next row of bone-trees. As soon as they were in place, a second pair got up to follow them onward.

  Two incoming arrows forced Dante back into place. "Four knights." With no nether to draw on, his options felt comically limited. "Advancing in pairs. Naran and Volo, time their advance, then see if you can shoot them down. If you can take them out, that might free me up to use the nether against the archers."

  Volo and Naran nocked arrows, sticking an eye from behind cover. The Odo Sein were moving fast, already within sixty feet. When the next pair moved, Volo and Naran both fired at the lead knight. The first arrow struck it square in the helmet, glancing off the tough scales of the swamp dragon's hide. The knight jerked up his shield and caught the second arrow squarely.

  A barrage of arrows forced everyone back into cover. When Dante looked out again, the archers were slowly fanning to left and right, searching for an angle of attack through the field of thin white pillars. Volo hit another knight in the breastplate, but the arrow broke with a metal clink.

  Dante gritted his teeth. "Hold, and the archers get behind us. Retreat?"

  Blays shook his head. "Charge."

  "Ha! You first."

  Blays rolled from behind cover, crouched too low to see or be seen. Dante ran at his heels. Ahead, he caught a glimpse of black scaled armor. Boots clapped against the smooth ground. A knight spotted them, calling to the others in unworried words. Dante's heart sank. He'd been hoping to take at least one of them out before the enemy knew they were coming. He trusted himself to be able to hold off a single knight while Blays dispatched the two others. But if he had to go two on one…then he'd hope Arawn was watching. Or not, considering how embarrassingly he was likely to lose.

  The knights jogged toward them, blades in hand, purple sparks popping from the edges like damp sticks of wood thrown in a fire. They were now too close to the Odo Sein for the enemy archers to fire on them. Dante stood and lifted his sword high, then brought it down to a guard. Blays put his nethereal blade forward, his plain steel weapon held back in reserve.

  A pair of knights converged on Blays. The other two circled toward Dante. Dante stopped in place, ready to dance back behind a trunk to try to keep himself from being engaged by both at once.

  An arrow zipped past his shoulder. The Odo Sein it was racing toward lifted his shield, ready to knock it aside. The bag-headed arrow thumped into the shield. Dante closed his eyes and dropped his legs out from beneath himself.

  The explosion ripped the knight's body into quadrants. Flame spurted between the white trunks. They cracked and toppled, landing with a sound that was heavier than wood but more hollow than stone. Heat breathed over Dante's right arm. He yanked it into the cover of the trunk in front of him.

  Blays jumped to his feet and sprinted toward the blast. The dismembered knight's partner was down on one knee, sword on the ground. Blays took off his head with a looping swipe.

  The two surviving knights exchanged a wordless look, then turned and retreated through the white pillars.

  An enemy arrow whipped over Dante's head. He got down. The air smelled like acrid smoke and an inside-out stomach. The archers covered the Odo Sein's withdrawal, then fell back with them, continuing to pepper Dante and Blays' position with shots.

  Crouching low, Blays unbuckled the dead knights' belts. He crossed one belt over his hip, grabbed up a fallen sword, and sheathed it. Naran and Volo joined them.

  Blays handed the other belt to Naran. "Leave the sword put away until it's time to use it. That is, unless you enjoy feeling like this guy over here." He pointed to a gobbet of former knight, then to another. "And over here. And here. And—"

  "I believe I get the picture." Naran sheathed his sword with a click.

  Volo looked up at Dante. "Is your face always that red? You look like a walking tomato."

  He scowled at her. "Was that you who shot them? Next time you're going to explode something, try not to do it directly in my face."

  "Then keep your face out of my explosions."

  Dante put away his sword. "That tingling. It started when the enemy got near us. I think it might have been a warning."

  Blays glanced down at his blades in disdain. "And they couldn't be bothered to warn us about the half-zombies in the pool?"

  "Then maybe it alerts you when you're in the presence of another sword-bearer."

  "Or maybe you don't know what you're talking about."

  "In these circumstances, that remains a strong possibility. Everyone fit to go on?"

  It turned out he was the only one who'd taken so much as a scratch. The retreating soldiers had gone in the same direction as the spike in Dante's head was pointing. As they moved through the trunks, the ground sloping gently uphill beneath them, he reached again and again for the nether. For years, he'd drawn on it reflexively, often for no purpose but to work his skills near the end of the day. Its lack made him more anxious by the second. A physical repulsion was growing in his gut, telling him to get out.

  But there was a second option to get back to the shadows: to destroy everyone who was keeping them away from him.

  The rain had stopped while they were inside the cavern, but as they hurried onward, it broke open again, drumming against the stony landscape. At the ridge, they got down on their bellies and crawled over the rim, continuing forward for fifteen feet before Dante was confident their silhouettes wouldn't show against the line of the hill.

  Ahead, more white trunks poked from the ground, but there were fewer of them, offering little cover. The land below them was a bowl-shaped valley hundreds of yards across. The white surface was spattered with deposits of iron gray rock which, judging from the sh
ine and the smell, probably were in fact iron ore. Where their edges touched the white matter, the ore had turned not the rusty orange of iron-bearing rock exposed to the weather, but bright crimson. Shallow pools of blood-red water collected in the depressions in the terrain.

  A hillock rose in the center of the valley. At the center of the hillock stood a dark cylinder. The two knights and their complement of archers were running toward the cylinder, where a group of thirty people stood in the rain. Multiple Odo Sein held watch on the perimeter of the hillock, obvious in their heavy armor.

  Most of the others held position between the knight sentries and the center. But next to the cylinder itself, a figure in gray robes gestured his hands to the sky.

  "That's Gladdic," Dante said.

  "And there's a small legion with him," Blays said. "Under normal circumstances, I'd tell them to go get some more friends to make it a fair fight, and then kill Gladdic when they fell for my ruse and left. But I'm guessing by the constipated look on your face that you still can't use the nether."

  "But again, if we kill all the Odo Sein there—"

  "Then we still won't know if there are others lurking around until it's too late."

  "Then what do you want to do? Sneak across this almost completely open field and try to surprise the people who are about to be warned by the other people whose asses we just kicked that we're about to sneak up on them?"

  "I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's typically a reason that people don't launch attacks on people who outnumber them ten times over."

  "Because it's stupid?" Volo said.

  "We could return to the Monsoon," Naran said. "Beseech them for assistance."

  Dante pinched his temples. "We don't even know if they've won their battle with the Drakebane. Or if they'd help us. Besides, whatever Gladdic's working on, he's doing it right now. If we run off to find Riza, by the time we get back, Gladdic could have one of his new demons ready."